DOUG JOHNSON: Welcome to AMERICAN MOSAIC, in VOA Special English.
This is Doug Johnson. On our show this week:
Music from this year’s top Grammynominees …
And a question from China about the meaning of a “hat trick.”
But first — a little lesson in astronomy.
Winter Solstice
Next Tuesday is the December solstice. At twelve hours forty-twominutes Universal Time, the sun will reach the point farthest southon its path. Winter will officially begin for people in the northernhalf of the world, and summer for those in the south. Jim Tedder hasmore.
JIM TEDDER: We do not usually think of the sun moving north tosouth in the sky, only east to west. But the movement northward andsouthward marks the change of seasons.
The word solstice comes from Latin. It means that the sun isstanding in place.
The December solstice takes place when the sun is directlyoverhead at the Tropic of Capricorn. Sao Paulo, Brazil, is alongthis southern latitude. The June solstice takes place when the sunis directly overhead at the Tropic of Cancer. That is about the samenorthern latitude as Havana, Cuba. On that day, around Junetwenty-first, the sun appears at its northernmost position in thesky.
People who live at or near the equator are said to live in the”tropics.” That is, the area between the Tropic of Cancer and theTropic of Capricorn. These are simply lines drawn on a map to markthe area that receives sunlight directly overhead during the year.The distance between them is about two thousand five hundredkilometers.
People who live along the equator experience fairly equal daysand nights all year.
Next Tuesday, here in Washington, we will have about nine andone-half hours of daylight. The farther north you travel, the longerthe nights are. Reykjavik, Iceland, will have less than four hoursof daylight.
But in Murmansk, Russia, the sun will not rise at all on the dayof the solstice. In fact, people there last saw the sun on Decemberthird. And they will not see it again until January seventh.
Hat Trick
DOUG JOHNSON: Our question this week comes from a listener inChina named Reed. He often hears the expression “hat trick” usedabout football. He would like to know what this means.
Football? We thought it came from ice hockey!
Well, we discovered that the term “hat trick” really came fromthe British sport of cricket in the eighteen hundreds.
The Oxford English Dictionary says a hat trick is when one bowlerin cricket takes three wickets by three balls, usually one afteranother. Players often received a new hat from their team as areward.
The expression “hat trick” in cricket first appeared in print bythe late eighteen seventies. Over the years, the term spread toother sports. For example, in horse racing, a hat trick is when ajockey wins three races in one day. In hockey and soccer football, ahat trick is when a player scores three goals in a single game.
And just recently we saw the term used in a headline on a storyabout a game in American football. It was about a player who scored– you guessed it — three touchdowns.
Hat trick is sometimes used in baseball when a player hits asingle, double, triple and home run in one game. Yes, that is fourthings, but who’s counting?
Today people use “hat trick” to mean just about anything thatcomes in threes. Examples might include a lawyer who wins threecases one after another. Or a politician who has won threeelections.
So if you know someone who has made three victories of any kind,you can say that he or she has scored a hat trick. But there isanother term we hear nowadays, a play on the word repeat:”Three-peat.”
Grammy Nominations
The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences has justannounced the nominations for its yearly Grammy awards. The awardswill be presented in February. The Grammys recognize excellentmusical recordings and those who create them. Faith Lapidus tells uswho has the most nominations this year.
FAITH LAPIDUS: The artist with the most nominations for GrammyAwards this year is Kanye West. He is nominated for ten awards,including Best New Artist, Album of the Year and Song of the Year.That nominated song is on the nominated album, “College Dropout.”Here it is: “Jesus Walks.”
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Usher has eight Grammy nominations. His best-selling album is thenominated “Confessions.” It has sold about seven million copies.Here is the top song from that album, “Yeah”.
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Another artist with eight Grammy nominations is Alicia Keys. HerBest Album nomination is for “The Diary of Alicia Keys.” We leaveyou now with Alicia Keys singing a song from that album. It isnominated for best song: “If I Ain’t Got You.”
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DOUG JOHNSON: This is Doug Johnson. I hope you enjoyed AMERICANMOSAIC.
This program was written by Mario Ritter and Nancy Steinbach.Paul Thompson was the producer. And our engineer was Efeem Drucker.
Join us again next week for AMERICAN MOSAIC, VOA’s radio magazinein Special English.